Memorial Day Reading: Lost in Iraq and Afghanistan

Memorial Day, which remembers the men and women who have fallen in America’s wars, asks us to move back in time, and to imagine lives that were cut short. It can be more comfortable to do so in terms of ever more distant history—the Civil War dead, the Greatest Generation, even, increasingly, Vietnam. Dwelling on those who have died in wars that ended only recently, or are not quite over—our own lost contemporaries—can be disconcerting, which also makes it an urgent task. Here, for Memorial Day weekend, are eight pieces from The New Yorker on the casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan.

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